


Soft Focus

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Books, Child Abuse, Friendship, Geek Love, Gen, Inspired by Art, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-13
Updated: 2011-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-23 17:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Soft Focus

  
title: Soft Focus  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: 1482  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG-13  
notes: college AU, modern setting, no powers. Written for [this amazing bit of fan art](http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/10153281632/against-stars-palalife-this-idea-cracked-me) by [palalife](http://palalife.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Erik the photographer, Charles the nerd, a pair of specs, and an analog SLR camera.  
Trigger warning for discussion of domestic abuse.

  
For all of his love of photography, Erik Lehnsherr has nearly always preferred to take pictures of things and not of people. Easier that way, far less stressful: you can arrange things, you can prop them up and put them in all kinds of scenes and situations and you never have to hear them complain, you never have to tell them to get in the moment, because they already exist in the moment. Because they simply _are_.

And he doesn't even know what made him decide to invite Charles Xavier over for a photoshoot. He doesn't know much about him except for the little details. The books are a given, polysyllabic science all over the place, and a few stray well-thumbed paperbacks tucked into the corners of Charles’s locker. _Jane Eyre_ and _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ , a copy of _Macbeth_ that’s been read damn near to shreds.

There is a first-aid kit in there, too, packed with more than just the essentials – there’s damn well near an emergency room in there, and there could be so many reasons why it’s there and Erik doesn’t know why it makes his blood boil on the other boy’s behalf.

A stray memory: a commotion in the corridors, a kid falling down wrong and knocking himself out, and Charles running past Erik, there to his locker and back to the victim, checking his eyes and his pulse with utterly eerie competence. Charles’s voice yelling for help, and Erik responding to him, and carrying the kid to the clinic – and then Charles speaking urgently, to the kid and to the nurse, and maybe it’s that voice that’s stayed with Erik all this time.

Pity you can’t take a picture of a voice.

Erik spends his Friday night in a half daze, cleans up his darkroom and the tiny bolthole of a studio he’s grafted on to his flat, really nothing more than the sunniest corner of the whole thing, the one next to the wall-to ceiling window that was the main reason he’d even taken the flat in the first place.

Too much white, Charles is already pretty pale – and after a moment Erik goes to his closet and he digs out a blanket in stripes of black and ochre and gray, throws it onto the floor, and he rearranges his lights and the one reflector around it. It might not help any – Erik only takes photographs in black and white – but who knows, maybe he’ll come up with some way of making use of it.

At five minutes to the meeting time he dashes out, cursing, because of course he’d asked Charles to come over in the morning and then he’d forgotten to set out refreshments. Coffee, sweet rolls, and the woman at the bakery winks and tips in three chocolate eclairs extra, refuses him when he tries to pay for the pastries, and Erik is still chuckling when he saunters back up to the third floor and Charles is leaning against the wall next to his door.

Charles is sleeping, his shoulders moving slightly with each breath, and Erik swears fervently, silently, for his camera. Sure, the wall is nothing to look at, it’s crap as a background and there is an inelegant bit of misspelled graffiti right next to Charles’s left ear, and the light is pretty much shit – but this, this is an image to keep, Erik thinks, and he holds it in his mind’s eye for as long as he can.

When he composes himself, after a long few moments, Erik jingles his keys loudly and Charles snaps awake.

The picture is spoiled, gone as if it’s never been there, but Erik doesn’t mind, because the smile Charles turns on him is almost as beautiful as the expression on his sleeping face.

Erik motions him inside, and he almost – almost – doesn’t mind when Charles makes a beeline for his bookshelves.

Erik drinks his coffee and, silently, picks up the camera and stalks Charles’s wanderings, smaller and smaller circles inside the apartment.

 _Click._ Here is Charles with the golden sunlight bringing out the auburn strands in his dark hair, murmuring to himself as he picks up a tiny silver statue of a knight on his charger.

 _Click._ Here is Charles with his hands behind his back, almost standing on the tips of his toes as he cranes his neck to look at the books piled on top of the shelf.

Charles turns and there is a dreamy little smile on his face that almost makes Erik’s heart stop – he doesn’t even know why Charles is smiling or what Charles is looking at – and it’s with great difficulty that he remembers to raise his camera and take the shot, and the click of the shutter is loud in the morning quiet of the room.

When Erik looks up from the camera Charles is all apologies. “Um, yes, sorry, I might have been looking a bit of a prat there, looking at your things without even asking for permission – sorry?”

Erik shrugs when he should be feeling annoyed. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Charles says.

Erik watches him halt just a step away from the setup in the corner of the room, watches Charles think for a moment and then, slowly and deliberately, get down on one knee to unlace his boots. Charles is bent over in one boot and one argyle sock and Erik holds out a hand, a silent request to stay still, and he hefts the camera and he knows he’s smiling as he takes the shot.

“Funny,” Charles deadpans. “I imagine people will flock to see that, a picture of a scuffed moldy old boot and a faded argyle sock with the ragged ankle.”

Erik merely smiles and refuses to rise to the bait.

He drinks the last of his coffee as Charles finishes off one of the eclairs, and then Charles is sitting down on the striped blanket, is hugging his knees to his chest. “Photographs, you said,” he says, and he pushes his eyeglasses up on his nose. “I don’t even know why me.”

Erik manages to keep his poker face. “Like I said: your eyeglasses.”

“Which, as I recall mentioning, are wildly unfashionable.”

“And you clearly weren’t listening, because I said that’s the exact reason why.” Erik gets down on his knees, then, and peers through the viewfinder at Charles’s perplexed smile. The shutter clicks again.

Erik calls a break after about fifteen minutes and he almost wishes he didn’t – Charles is loosening up at last, has finally lost the hunted, tentative edge to his smile – and he offers Charles a glass of water and another sweet roll. He casts around for a subject, and hesitates, and asks: “Tell me about that first-aid kit in your locker.”

A long minute – Erik counts the seconds before Charles looks up, honestly startled – and then Charles rolls up his sleeves. Every day they’ve walked past each other and stood next to each other at the lockers, and Erik’s always seen Charles in some kind of combination of long sleeves and jumper.

Erik looks down – and immediately looks away. Grimaces in understanding and a terrible foreknowledge. After a moment, he returns trust for trust, and he does something similar – he rolls down the collar of his ever-present turtleneck.

He watches Charles’s eyes acquire an achingly familiar pinch at the corners. Lines of pain and sympathy. But all that he says is “You too, I see,” and Erik looks away, suddenly hunching protectively over his camera, bowed under the secret they’re both carrying.

Scars from beatings and various other injuries, livid against the skin.

“Who was it?” Charles asks, very quietly.

“Foster parents. Plural. You?”

“Stepfather and stepbrother.”

Erik growls and doesn’t realize he’s growling until he registers Charles’s surprised eyes. “ _Fuck_ them,” Erik says instead, as fervently as he can.

“Agreed,” Charles says quietly.

Silence, and Erik wills his heart to stop beating with rage and sympathy and the pain of his most hated memories – and then there are hands on his shoulders, and Erik looks up, and Charles is taking the camera from him, is hefting it in careful, tentative hands.

Erik covers his face, instinctively, and he knows it’s too late when he hears the click. “I’m not going to print that for you, don’t even think about asking for it,” he says, trying to break the thin moment that spins out between them like a thread of glass.

It’s worth it, though, when Charles finally laughs. It sounds a little forced, it sounds a lot more than just hunted, but it’s a distraction, and it’s enough. Erik thinks he’s done his good deed for the day.  



End file.
